Another SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) after its successful flight on Tuesday, March 14. It was the 27th contracted cargo mission of Elon Musk's company for NASA, and it is carrying precious cargo for heart research on the floating laboratory in low Earth orbit.
SpaceX's CRS-27 Cargo Mission Lifted on Time
Space.com reports that SpaceX's CRS-27 cargo mission sent the robotic Dragon spacecraft aloft from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 8:30 p.m. EDT on March 14 or 0030 GMT on March 15.
If all goes as planned, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft will arrive at the ISS on March 16 at 7:52 a.m. EDT (1152 GMT). CRS-27 was the third flight for this specific Dragon capsule and the seventh for the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that took it to orbit.
The rocket will very certainly fly again after it landed precisely on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" roughly seven minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff on Tuesday. The landing was momentous for the firm as well as for spaceflight in general.
SpaceX engineer Zachary Luppen said during the CRS-27 launch webcast that the recovery operations of the rocket are being managed by an all-female crew, a historic first in an industry usually dominated by men. He added that this could be the first all-female crew for any kind of operation such as that. The crew operates the recovery ships and in getting the Falcon 9 rocket safely to the shore.
But perhaps the highlight of the launch is the scientific experiments it was carrying. Aboard the CRS-27 are spacewalk equipment, vehicle hardware and other supplies, and 60 new scientific experiments that include beating human heart tissues.
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ISS Crew To Conduct Heart Studies in Space
A project run by the US National Institutes of Health and the International Space Station National Laboratory called Tissue Chips in Space aims to conduct heart studies while in low Earth orbit.
NASA officials said on March 9 that the studies, Cardinal Heart 2.0 and Engineered Heart Tissues-2, use small devices with tissue-based human hearts to advance the development of treatments for cardiac diseases.
Cardinal Heart 2.0
The Cardinal Heart 2.0 experiment will be using heart organoids to test whether already-approved drugs can also protect heart cells in microgravity. Stanford Cardiovascular Institute postdoctoral researcher Dilip Thomas said that the tiny 3D clumps of heart tissue were treated prior to the launch on Tuesday with the goal of preventing the negative effects of microgravity from setting in.
According to Live Science, the organoids were grown from stem cells and will serve as tiny models of human hearts that mimic the features and functions of a real heart. It has cardiomyocytes and cells that provide physical scaffolding for heart muscles, as well as endothelial cells.
Engineered Heart Tissues-2
The Engineered Heart Tissues-2 experiment uses two devices that carry cardiomyocytes in small fluid-filled chambers. These heart muscle cells were also grown from stem cells and formed into 3D shapes in the laboratory.
As Live Science reported, cardiomyocytes were strung between two posts, in which one post contains a magnet that moves every time the muscle cell contracts. The magnet is tracked using a sensor that will monitor contractions in real-time.
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